93-year-old WWII pilot flies back to Australia to commemorate war battle

PASADENA - Four inches have been added to his waistband and five pounds to his lanky 6-foot-3-inch frame, but in his new replica uniform John B. Wells doesn't look so very different from the "pea green" pilot he was in 1941.

The 93-year-old World War II B-26 bomber pilot will head for Australia this month, the lone veteran representing the 18th Recon Squadron/408th Bomb Squadron stationed there during the height of the battle in the South Pacific.

His new uniform is tailored with the vintage style, fabric and insignia of his era. And Wells, president of the 22nd Bomb Group Assoc., will be wearing it for the memorial service and dedication of a plaque in the town of Charters Towers in Northern Queensland, part of a "Victory in the Pacific" Heritage Festival commemorating the arrival of U.S. servicemen there 70 years ago.

"They asked if we'd show up in uniform," Wells said about his new outfit.

And since an Arctic parka was "the only survivor" of his service togs, he had to improvise.

"We found this place that makes uniforms from the old fabric, in the old style - I'd forgotten how high we wore our pants then," Wells joked. "It's pretty funny."

He can still put on his garrison cap at a rakish angle, without even a glance in the mirror. He can reel off stories of his comrades, details of their missions flying over the Coral Sea and high mountain ranges to bomb Japanese invaders in New Guinea; the grinding work of ground crews "cannibalizing" parts to keep the planes flying; plus some off-duty escapades.

But it wasn't always that way, said Jane Wells, his wife of 64 years. Until their three children coaxed him to add his wartime memories to a spoken record of his childhood, the Chattanooga, Tenn. native never talked about the war.

"Not a word," she said. "It took quite a while to come out. We'd be asleep and I'd wake up and he'd be crying. The memories were buried way down, but every now and then they'd surface. Was it (President Harry) Truman who said, `War is Hell?"'

It was Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman who said it, but Wells was one of those who lived it.

"When I look back on it, we were just naive kids, but we were damn good pilots," he said. "We had absolutely no combat experience ... We were pea green, but we could fly. We got the job done."

Wells' four traveling companions will include Thomas E. Dewan of Staunton, Va., and William J. Dewan of New Mexico, the son and grandson of 18th Recon Sq/408th Bomb Squadron navigator Merrill Dewan, who served with Wells.

"He was a buddy of J.B. (Wells), and like him he survived the war and came back to civilian life," Tom Dewan said. His father died in 1963, at age 45, he said, but left behind a diary that was later published, recording his wartime thoughts and emotions.

Wells said reading that diary was key to unlocking his own complicated feelings about his service, which he called a "defining moment" of his life.

"We went from being very naive to being fairly cynical, I guess," he said. "You didn't stay long as a kid."

The air war in the Pacific, with untested American pilots and planes fighting the cream of the Japanese air crews, is often overshadowed by the European action, he said.

But if not everyone here remembers what American pilots did in the Pacific, the Australians have never forgotten, Dewan said.

Having Wells be there for the ceremony "means everything" to them, Dewan said.

Some of the Australian co-pilots who helped familiarize the Americans with the terrain on the Australian coast, the Coral Sea and New Britain will also attend, Dewan said.

He still marvels at what Wells, his father and all the other young pilots achieved, he said.

"(The bombers) had no fighter escort as they fought against Japanese targets - and they basically took brand new planes, not test-flown, gave them to the crews and sent them into battle," he said. "They left Langley Air Force Base the day after Pearl Harbor and flew directly into combat. John was in the first bomber group to arrive in the Pacific and flew into action as the Japanese were advancing on Australia."

Wells came back stateside in 1943, with the "worn-out" and later scrapped B26 bombers, and began work on training pilots and testing munitions. He still has some regrets about not being there for the end of the war.

Looking back, he said, so many terrible things happened and so many of his comrades never came home.

But he has no doubts that they all played a major role in preventing a Japanese invasion of Australia from New Guinea.

"We were just a bunch of raggedy-ass Yanks," he said. "But we stopped them there ... Sometimes you get to dreaming about it, you're back again - and there's enough conceit to think you probably could still do it."

An illustrated World War II history of the 22nd Bombardment Group "Revenge of the Red Raiders" is available in the Pasadena Public Library system.